Active Audience – Engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it. 

Passive Audience – More likely to accept the messages encoded in a media text without challenge and are therefore more likely to be directly affected by the messages. 

Extension: Explain the ways in which media products are thought to impact on audiences cognitively, affectively and behaviourally? 

Media products can impact audiences because they can provide them with dramaticised information that they believe is factual and real. 

Active audience – when an audience is engaging, interpreting, and responding to media messages and are able to question the message.

Passive audience – An audience that is exposed to media material but doesn’t actively engage with the content or messaging.

Extension task: Explain the ways in which media products are thought to impact on audiences cognitively, affectively and behaviourally?

Media products such as newspapers and magazines can affect audiences cognitively as they provide factual information, meaning that the information involved is more likely to be understood by the audience and they can absorb the information through memorization.

Any media product can impact the audience affectively if the content in the product relates to the viewer.  Media messages can have no effect if no one sees or hears them. However, what the audience chooses to look into depends on their interests, education and work commitments.

Other media products online such as advertising can affect pre-teen and teenage behaviour negatively, including self-image, body image, health and citizenship. Any child’s self-image and body image can be influenced by social media.

Active audience= Active audiences are when an audience is engaging, interpreting, and responding to media messages. They are more likely to develop their own interpretation of a media text based on their beliefs and social context. 

Passive audience= Passive audiences are directly influenced by the messages encoded in media texts because they do not question or challenge those meanings. 

Extension task= Explain the ways in which media products are thought to impact on audiences cognitively, affectively and behaviourally.

I think media products, like video games, are thought to expand people’s knowledge and influence minds in both positive and negative ways. There is an increased belief of potential violence in the real world from watching violent media content leading to anxiety about personal safety.

Task 1:

Explain how Bandura’s view of media audiences is essentially different to that held by Shirky and Jenkins.

Albert Bandura is a psychologist who focuses on people’s behaviours and emphasises the importance of observing, modelling and imitating behaviours/attitudes and emotional reactions of others. His theory considers how both environmental and cognitive factors interact to influence human learning and behaviour. Bandura believes that children observe and learn from the people around them behaving in various ways. Therefore, this links to media audiences as he believes the media can directly ‘implant’ ideas into the mind of audiences. This is different to Shirky and Jenkins view of media audiences.

In contrast, Henry Jenkins believes that the media is one-way communication. This means that the flow of communication was from the media producers (Radio, Newspapers and Magazines for example) to the audiences or receivers. He believes that: ‘Fans produce meanings and interpretations; fans produce artworks; fans produce alternative identities’. In each case, fans are drawing on materials from the dominant media and employing them in ways that serve their own interests and facilitate their own pleasures.

Similarly, Clay Shirky focuses on the death of the mass media and the rising usefulness of networks. He argues that with the advent of digital and social media, audiences no longer play a passive receiving role; they become active participants and content creators. This means that the media is growing and becoming more interactive for audiences.

Task 2:

1. Why, according to the news report, do investors like the Video Games Industry so much?

Investors like the Video games Industry so much because the engagement continues to grow and that could mean big returns for investors interested in the space. It is also one of the fastest growing markets ever.

2. What are e-sports?

E-sports is where people play competitively on a multiplayer game for spectators, and competitions can be held. Usually, these are videoed or live streamed and millions of people enjoy watching.

3. How is new digital media technology changing the way that video games are accessed by consumers? 

Traditionally, consumers used to play on consoles or PCs, but now, the percentage of time spent gaming on mobile devices has increased rather than consoles. Mobiles and tablets have influenced the structure of many industries, and 50% of gaming will be conducted on mobile and tablet devices.

4. What does FPS and MMORP stand for? 

FPS – First Person Shooter. – A game that puts the player in first person whilst containing guns. 

MMORP – Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing game.  

Active Audience – audiences who engage, interpret and respond to media texts in different ways and can challenge encoded ideas (e.g. discussing the media products with other audiences).

Passive Audience – audiences that are more likely to accept encoded messages and therefore be directly influenced/affected by them (e.g. simply consuming media then moving on).